Charles A. Murray

Who is Charles A. Murray?

Charles Alan Murray is an American libertarian political scientist, author, columnist, and pundit currently working as a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, DC. He is best known for his controversial book The Bell Curve, co-authored with Richard Herrnstein in 1994, which argues that intelligence plays a central role in American society.

He first became well known for his Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950–1980 in 1984, which discussed the American welfare system. Murray has also written In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government, What It Means to be a Libertarian: A Personal Interpretation, Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950, and In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State. He published Real Education: Four Simple Truths for Bringing America's Schools Back to Reality in 2008.

Murray's articles have appeared in Commentary Magazine, The New Criterion, The Weekly Standard, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times.